Music: Elbow

Published on Tuesday 21 October 2008 20:35

ELBOW ACADEMY, GLASGOW

AFTER spending the last decade as a reasonably well-respected, mid-table indie rock band, Elbow's Mercury win this year for their fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid has thrown light on the Mancunian band's refreshingly organic career trajectory.

Rather than diving into the boom and bust cycle of hype and failed expectation which most musical flavours of the month have to get over, they have kept their heads down and built themselves a strong repertoire.

Singer Guy Garvey, whose name is often quoted in proximity to the words "nicest man in rock", thinks his band deal in two types of hopeless romance: "The type where you can't help yourself, and then the type where it's all one way – that's right, the sh*t kind."

Although they do particular justice to this time-honoured subject, that's not the whole story – the strident Leaders of the Free World is one of the more effective protest songs to be written by a contemporary UK band, and the shiningly anthemic One Day Like This seems to be as much about a general depression as it is lovesickness.

Elbow's music, be it hopelessly romantic or not, is a warm, autumnal kind of sound, and each track is distinctively powerful. Weather to Fly and Mirrorball, for example, are flowing, gentle songs that go best with a seat and a daydream, while Grounds for Divorce and Forget Myself are hook-heavy indie disco staples.

Garvey, who cheerfully regaled us with Richard Hawley's favourite masturbation joke and urged that only a rendition of We Are Sailing from the crowd would get the band back for an encore, needn't worry about disappearing under the radar again after this year.